Many counting processes are known in the art, in particular for counting piled planar substrates.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,601, the content of which in incorporated by reference in the present application, discloses a counting station for counting the notes of value, in particular banknotes, of a banderoled pack of notes. In this patent, each pack of notes comprises 10 banderoled bundles of notes of 100 freshly printed notes of value, i.e. each pack contains 1000 notes of value. The packs of notes in which the notes lie one on top of the other are taken past a banderoling station and are provided with a banderole. Then, the packs of notes are tilted by 90° so that the notes lie in upright position, one behind the other in the transporting direction. Two counting devices are then provided with counting disks and the packs are taken past the counting rim of the counting disks while each counting disk leafs through the corners of the individual notes of value of each pack and counts the individual notes. Of course the transporting speed of the packs has to be precisely synchronised with the counting speed determined by the rotational speed of the disks.
Other mechanical counting devices are known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,953,022, 3,904,189, CH patent 422 834 and EP patent application No 0 737 936.
This first known technique of counting piled notes of securities has some drawbacks, the main one being the fact that the notes are touched by the counting device, usually a disk, which may deform said notes or even tear them thus producing notes with defects at the end of the production run, a moment where it is very difficult to replace individual notes already bundled into packs.
Other techniques used for counting sheets in a pile of sheets are known for example from EP patent application No 0 743 616, the content of which is incorporated by reference in the present application. This application discloses an apparatus and method for counting sheets in which a light source illuminates the edge of a plurality of sheets, such as a pack of sheets. A sensor array receives light reflected from the edge and generates a signal representative of the reflected light corresponding to the sheets. This signal is then processed along one dimension of the edge to count the sheets in the plurality of sheets.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,534,690 and 5,686,729 disclose other counting devices and methods using optical means.
Finally, European patent application No03009915.4 filed on Apr. 30, 2003 in the name of KBA-GIORI S. A., the content of which is enclosed by reference in the present application, discloses a counting process for counting planar substrates, such as sheets of securities or banknotes, checks, cards and other similar objects, piled in a pack, comprising the steps of    (a) loosening the pack of piled substrates;    (b) taking a first image of the edges of the piled planar substrates on a first counting side of said pack, said image being made of a two-dimensional array of single image detectors arranged in lines and columns;    (c) for each column of single image detectors of said array, counting the number of edges of substrates detected in each line of single image detectors to obtain a counting value for each column;    (d) statistically treating the result obtained from step    (c) for determining which counting values are obtained and how often;    (e) based on the statistical treatment, determining whether the counting is accurate.
This method is relatively complicated and involves a statistical treatment of the information to determine the accuracy of the counting.
On the other hand, cutting processes and methods are known in the art.
As an example, US patent application published under the number US 2003/0131702 on Jul. 17, 2003, the content of which is incorporated by reference in the present application, discloses a method and device to cut securities, such as securities or banknotes. In this patent application, securities, in particular bank notes, are printed onto sheets which each contain a specific number of these imprints of individual papers of value, which are arranged in matrix form, that is to say in rows and columns, the total number of imprints per sheet naturally depending on the dimensions of the sheet and the size of each imprint. Furthermore, a free strip must remain between each sheet edge and the imprints in each outer row or each outer column, in order that the sheets can be gripped by grippers to be transported in the printing presses and can be held firmly on the rolls during the printing of the actual papers of value. These free strips further permit the imprint of reference marks on each sheet, with which the maintenance of register of the sheets can be ensured if successive printing operations have to be superimposed without gaps or lined up in rows without gaps. This maintenance of register is also important when a plurality of various printing techniques are used at the same time and the sheet runs successively through a plurality of machines.
Following the printing of the individual papers of value, the sheets are stacked, each stack containing a specific number of sheets, for example 100. The sheet stacks are then fed to a machine which cuts them up into stacks of individual papers of value, which can then be sorted in order to separate out misprints or can be packed in packs. During the cutting method, the free strips and the papers of value themselves are therefore cut.
In the method known from US 2003/0131702, a stack of 100 sheets undergoes several cutting steps and rotation to cut the stack into successive strips of prints and then said strips are cut into successive stacks of individual securities. The stacks are transported out of the cutting machine for further processing operations, such as counting of the securities, banderoling into packs, as is known in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,283,902, the content of which is incorporated by reference in the present application, discloses another example of a process and apparatus for converting piles of freshly printed sheets of bank notes into bundles of bank notes. In this patent, piles of freshly printed sheets of multiple bank notes are cut into bundle strips and then these bundle strips are cut into individual bundles of bank notes. A banding station is located between the cutting unit cutting the piles of sheets into bundles of strips and the cutting unit cutting these bundle strips into bundle of bank notes and comprises as many banding device operating in synchronism and located in one row as there are individual bank notes per strip so that the bundles of each strip are banded before this strip is cut into bundles.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 3,939,621 discloses a method for the processing of sheets of printed security papers into bundles and packets.